


Always At War

by toodelicatee



Category: The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
Genre: Death, Euthanasia, F/M, Illness, Lost Love, Romance, World War II, dejection, dying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-18
Updated: 2014-09-18
Packaged: 2018-02-17 21:55:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2324501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toodelicatee/pseuds/toodelicatee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is tired. With the sweet tendrils of Hanna's voice and the fatal dose percolating through his veins, Almásy needs something, or someone, to pull him through. And there has only ever been one person capable of achieving such a feat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Always At War

Hana has always been soft-spoken for as long as he has known the girl. It is something the English patient enjoys. When she read Kipling, all wrong rhythmically, it had been the tone of her voice that had redeemed the young nurse in his mind. He wishes now that he could adjust his hearing aid. All the sounds of the world, he wants to hear them louder than he has ever done. Everything illuminated. He wants to move his arms too. And maybe if he tries with all his best efforts, maybe they _will_  stir. But moving right now would be fighting. The morphine is in his veins, flying through like an incensed crusade. If he shifts the position of any one of his limbs he realises this would be battling, a war. He is sick, literally to death, with conflict.  
  
 _We die rich with lovers...  
  
_ He wonders what Katharine meant by that. He likes to think that she didn't intend the plural, that he was her last and only thought, but he had always been an arrogant bastard. Jealous and in love with envy even more than he ever was with her. She'd slap him if she knew what he was thinking, she would beat and bruise and bloody him, and lick him clean after.  
  
 _I want all this marked on my body._  Her bare torso would have been strong enough to contain it all. All the places, all the people, all the triumphs. She could have carried them on her skin, in her bones, she could have done it with ease and a pride that wasn't perverse and power-hungry like the false nations. _We are the real countries. Not boundaries drawn on maps with the names of powerful men._ And he doesn't believe she has ever been more right. His hatred of nationalism, of glory and honour and such foolish blindness- if he had been asked by an intrigued party, he doesn't believe he would have been able to articulate his thoughts as well. She spoke for him.  
  
 _I know you will come and carry me out into the palace of winds._  
  
 _I came for you, just not in time,_ he thinks. He wonders if she began to loathe him in her final moments. A typical lover would feel sadness at this notion but he does not. He smiles as best as his charred features allow. For their entire time together, there had been one underbelly to their relationship, and hatred had been it. He- a pig, she- a velociraptor. Her hands were so fast and hungry, clawing his back until it bled, like he was her prey.   
  
Death is nothingness. There is no God, he is sure. In a few seconds, he will not be reunited with his Katharine like the lovers are in old-fashioned stories. He will not enter the kingdom of heaven or crawl on his belly to hell. He will simply cease to exist. This life he's lived, he decides, it was never about Katharine. It was never leading up to her, or recovering from her. She just happened to him.  
  
And in the darkness that follows, an ensuing caliginosity, there is a flicker of blonde. He remembers the night by the fire. Another flicker and she is there, before him. A blanket around her shoulders, hair greased and astray, face burnt and red, sand everywhere. From where he lies, he can gaze at her quite clearly, at his own leisure. _How life mimicked art_. He had always been Gyges, from that very night. They were very alike apart from perhaps one decision.   
  
He chooses to submit.  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
